It was all in for Demi Vollering, apparently. The reigning champion, a two-time Strade Bianche winner, and already flying – four days of racing in 2026, already four victories. FDJ United-Suez had one objective in Siena: win, and win with Vollering. It was what pretty much everyone expected, after all. Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, the other big favourite, had a point the day before, though: it wasn’t only about Vollering. “I don’t see Demi as bigger than anyone else,” the Frenchwoman said. “There are other riders who can also be good.” Despite a track record of finishing in the top-10 of the biggest one-day races last year, however, Ferrand-Prévot wasn’t thinking about Elise Chabbey. That’d be silly – FDJ were all in for Vollering.
But one-day races have a funny way of upending the odds and flipping the scripts. A badly-timed mechanical here (one each for Vollering and Ferrand-Prévot, scuppering their own chances) and a deviation there (the second group, that included Vollering and Ferrand-Prévot, headed down an unmarked gravel track to ruin their chase) and boom, time for Plan B.
It was a good thing FDJ United-Suez had a Plan B. Just like Visma-Lease a Bike did with Marianne Vos. Chabbey – 32, a winner of five races, four of them in her country of Switzerland – animated the race at the halfway point, forcing a move at the foot of the first ascent of the four-star Colle Pinzuto with Dominika Wlodarczyk of UAE Team ADQ. It was, on the face of it, a move to set up Vollering later in the race.
But when Vollering suffered problems with her bike towards the top of Le Tolfe – the steepest, most pivotal gravel sector of the race – with just over 40km to go, Chabbey had a choice to make, with the aid of her team directors. Drop back and help Vollering bridge back to the group of favourites behind? Or remain at the head of the race, conserve energy, and take up leadership duties? It’s never an easy decision. Choose right, and you look like a hero, a tactical genius. Choose wrong, and you risk team division, accusations of favouritism, and of other riders not being given their own opportunities. The road decides, they say. And FDJ decided it was now all in for Chabbey.
There was no guarantee of success, though. Far from it. Chabbey has progressed enormously in the past few seasons – she was an Olympic canoeist in 2012, and didn’t start her professional cycling career until 2018 – and she has all the capabilities of winning these hilly races, but she’s not a Kasia Niewiadoma, Elisa Longo Borghini, Lotte Kopecky nor Puck Pieterse. She’s good, but she’s not yet a proven big race winner. Until now.
Chabbey and Wlodarczyk were expectedly reeled in by the a dozen-strong chase group, prompting half an hour of repeated attacks from just about every rider. Chief among them Chabbey. Once and then twice. When Longo Borghini attacked on the final trip up the Le Tolfe, Chabbey failed to stick with her. It looked like a race-winning move with just 11km remaining. Perceptions can deceive, though: shortly after, the dozen riders were riding as one once more, and it was all set for a showdown up the Via Santa Catarina and a sprint into the Piazza del Campo.
Longo Borghini, again, went to the front, and Niewiadoma followed her. But Chabbey was there too. No bother that she’d been out front with Wlodarczyk, pushing the pedals harder than anyone else to tee up her teammate Vollering later on, Chabbey was fresh, with legs, and with a cunning mind. Up and around the tight, mediaeval streets of Siena, Chabbey stayed with the aforementioned two and then passed them with the elegance of a Formula One driver overtaking their warring, distracted rivals in a tight chicane. She shocked them – both by her move and by her presence – and Strade was hers.
Vollering, dressed in all white as the European champion, was shocked as well. Plan B, to be enacted only in the case of emergency, had come off. It was Chabbey, not Vollering, who was the race winner. “It should have been for Demi, but today it’s for me,” Chabbey said at the finish, not quite believing it was indeed for her and not Vollering. “Everybody in this team is committed so much. The staff, my teammates and myself, we all work really united.”
Being out front for so long had, she admitted, tired her. “I did some efforts in the break. I was really on the limit so many times. So many times in my head I was like, ‘I just want to give up’, but then I was like, ‘No, for Demi that is behind me and for all the work that my teammates have done’. I needed to go to the finish and see. And I crossed the line first. Wow, I just cannot realise it.”
“I’m so proud of you,” Vollering shouted to Chabbey, interrupting her winner’s press conference. Chabbey hugged her, smiled with her, and then said: “I’m so proud I could do it for the team.” It’s always good to have a Plan B. Just in case. You never know when it’ll be needed.
